Even before Trump, asylum seeker already caught up in clogged system

San Diego Tribune
Sunday January 22, 2017
By Kate Morrissey

Asylum seeker Mohammad Hassan wept as he talked about his history and his situation during an interview at the ICE Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune)

As President Donald Trump sets out to ramp up immigration enforcement, the system already is overwhelmed — not just with the “criminals” Trump has said he will target, but also with people not accused of any crime, many seeking asylum in the U.S. using their rights under international law.

One such asylum seeker, currently detained at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico, is Mohamed Hassan, a Somali native who fled, saying a terrorist group tortured him and wanted to kill him because he made a career out of singing and dancing to Western music like Michael Jackson, Eminem and Shakira.

“Beat It” is his favorite Jackson song, and he passes the time awaiting his opportunity for an asylum hearing by entertaining other inmates.

Al-Shabaab, the terrorist organization, has controlled parts of southern Somalia for years and is aligned with Al-Qaeda, according to the National Counterterrorism Center.

Hassan says the group jailed and tortured him because it had banned music and other leisure activities. To get away from the danger, his family scattered. His brother ended up as a refugee in Ethiopia and Libya before being resettled in the U.S. in Iowa. His sisters took shelter in refugee camps in Zambia.

“My brother advised me that the U.S. is the best place to live in the world,” Hassan, 25, said through a fellow detainee acting as interpreter.

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Once he escaped Al-Shabaab, he set out on his own journey that eventually led him to Brazil and up to the U.S. border, where U.S. law allows asylum seekers to receive an interview and later trial to determine whether their fear of their home country is credible and warrants the protection of permanent residency.

Advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint last week saying asylum seekers are being turned away in violation of international law — something the government denies. Even if they are allowed in, the wait for processing — generally, while confined to a detention center — is long.

Immigration attorneys and advocacy organizations say that many asylum seekers don’t need to be held in detention. They say those who have passed the credible fear interview should be allowed to wait for their trial dates outside of detention.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s policies for the past seven years have said the agency will release asylum seekers after they pass the interview as long as the agency believes they will show up in court and are not dangerous. Attorneys and advocates say that’s not actually what’s happening.

Asylum seekers, like refugees, must have been persecuted or in danger of being persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion. The difference between asylum seekers and refugees is that refugees wait in limbo in other countries while the United Nations tries to find a place to resettle them, and asylum seekers come to the United States and ask for protection.

Attorneys and advocates say many are being held without a clear reason, and if they are offered the opportunity to get out, the bond amount is so high that they stay stuck in detention anyway. As a result, they say, U.S. taxpayers pay an unnecessary cost of detaining asylum seekers.

Detained asylum seekers also have trouble finding lawyers to take their cases, which makes it much harder to win their cases, and they deal with the added mental trauma of being incarcerated after living through the experiences that make them qualified for asylum in the first place.

“Most of them came for the exact purpose of having a judge review the case,” said Bardis Vakili, attorney with the ACLU in San Diego. “They came because they want the process. The notion they would abscond is outrageous.”

Hassan has been in immigration detention for over a year. He came to the Otay Mesa port of entry in January 2016 and asked for asylum. He passed the credible fear interview in February 2016.

Since Hassan did not enter the U.S. before asking for asylum, ICE — rather than an immigration judge — had control over whether to release him from detention for the first six months. Despite its policy to release asylum seekers who have passed the credible fear interview, and despite his having a brother in the U.S. who was ready to help him get settled, ICE did not release Hassan.

A 2013 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom found that in fiscal 2012, 80 percent of asylum seekers who passed their interviews were released. That number decreased to 47 percent in 2015, according to the ACLU.

Because of a court ruling in the Ninth Circuit, those held in detention centers in California have a right to a bond hearing with an immigration judge after six months. When Hassan had that bond hearing in September 2016, the immigration judge set bond at $20,000. The minimum is $1,500.

Hassan couldn’t pay it, he said, because, for someone from Somalia, it was an enormous amount of money.

A class action lawsuit brought by the ACLU recently established that immigration judges and ICE must take a detainee’s ability to pay into account when setting a bond amount. That decision currently applies to detention centers in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, but could eventually affect San Diego and Imperial detention centers as well.

Hassan said being in the immigration detention facility in Calexico is better than being in jail back in Somalia.

“There is a difference between jail there and here,” Hassan said. “Here, life is good. You can live healthy.”

The detention facility in Calexico has a large, dusty field with a basketball goal, soccer goals, a volleyball court and benches to sit on. Each unit rotates for a turn on the field lasting about two hours. The units have card games, Jenga and other board games. Detainees have access to a library, medical care and a dentist.

Detaining Hassan has cost the U.S. more than $46,000 so far, based on the average cost per day per detainee in the 2017 budget for the Department of Homeland Security.

Despite his confinement, Hassan hasn’t stopped dancing. He performs for the other detainees in his unit, and he’s now certified as a Zumba instructor through a work program at the detention center.

“Whenever I sing and dance, the stress goes down,” Hassan said. “I feel better.”

Immigration detention is civil detention, which means that it cannot be used as punishment. It can only be used to hold people who have an immigration court date or who are waiting to be deported.

The number of asylum seekers arriving at the border has increased over the last several years, according to a report recently released by the Department of Homeland Security. The number of cases in which the person asked for asylum either at the border or as part of a deportation proceeding more than doubled between fiscal 2011 and fiscal 2015, to 42,391 from 17,916, according to a report from the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

Trump’s plans for immigration enforcement could mean court dates pushed even farther into the future and longer detention times for those with legitimate asylum claims if ICE holds them for the duration of the trial.

The Calexico detention facility has four private rooms where detainees go through their credible fear interviews over the phone. The asylum officers who conduct the interviews work out of the Los Angeles area. A staff member said the Calexico facility averages about 60 interviews every day.

Those who don’t pass the interviews will be sent back across the border. Those who do will go on to the next step, waiting in detention like Hassan, for their chance at a life in the U.S.

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